Taking it to the hoop

With less than a week before the start of the NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, I decided to do a project I have had in my mind for a few months but never thought to execute until now.

In March, I took a photograph of one of the basketball scoreboards at Cerritos High School, in the same gym that Mississippi State head basketball coach Ben Howland played in when he went to school.  It has an "old-school" look, not only with the graphics, but also with spaces for complete rosters of both teams.  That evolved into an idea to make up a game between teams representing the Meadow and Four Oaks communities at the Meadow gymnasium.  (The high schools in those areas, as well as Benson High, were consolidated to make South Johnston High in 1969.)  For the player names, I used street names found in each of those areas.  (The PDF files for the school attendance boundaries can be accessed from this page.)

Wearing number 23 for Four Oaks is a new character I'm introducing here, Harold "Bud" Strickland.  He is a local legendary athlete; he still holds the all-time county passing yardage record as a football player, was the starting small forward in basketball, made all-county also in baseball, threw the javelin in track, and even was an amateur boxer briefly.  Strickland is also the owner of the land that is the home of Camp Paradise; more on that later.

On the other side of the board is Meadow's number 22, none other than Buddy Wayne Barefoot!  B.W. was a point guard in high school at South Johnston (also Hambone's alma mater) and he would reprise his role here, as well as being an assistant coach.  The head coach would be Hubert Barefoot, an uncle of his; Hubert's father is Jesse Wiley Barefoot, older brother of Popeye's father John Noah.

Oh, and to make this matchup more interesting, one of B.W.'s aunts, Dina Barefoot, is married to one of Bud's sons, Kenneth Strickland!  And there are more connections than even that:

• Buddy's first cousin Kim Strickland is one of Bud's granddaughters; she's a singer/songwriter and once was a roommate of B.W.'s wife Brittany Spears in Nashville.
• Bud Strickland rented out 170 acres of his land to four brothers - Bear, Boo Boo, Cooter, and Little Jack - who are fourth cousins of B.W.  (Their two times great-grandfather John Vinson and B.W.'s, Noah Gideon, were brothers).  Bear began Camp Paradise on that land, but he has since turned over chief executive duties to Hambone.

Unfortunately, when I put the scoreboard picture in the file, some parts turned out to be blurry.  This is due to me not being completely steady when I took the photo.  Also, I had to transform and skew the original photograph to make it appear to have a flat perspective.  To replace the blurry parts, I used pieces of a scoreboard found on this page.  I reduced the opacity and erased "appendages" to make it blend in with what I already had.  The numerals are from a football scoreboard I found on the Web while in my class at ABC Adult School and then transferred to my hard drive.

Cue up "Sirius" (the Chicago Bulls' theme music and the best of its kind ever!) and have a look...